Ignite Reveals Simraceway Indy 500 Pedigree

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Ignite send word that their peculiarly-named online multiplayer racing game, Simraceway, will be endorsed by and in some way shaped by the experience of Indy 500 champion Dan Whedon. The idea here is to create an realistic, solid, rewarding racer, rather than something all shiny, as Ignite’s Jonathan Haswell explains: “The core aim of the Simraceway online racing environment is simply to do online, live, multiplayer racing, really, really well. This racing environment will be much less about high detailed visual models and cinematic replays, like most current racing games, and much more about close, hard, door handle to door handle racing with live people who have been well matched by skill level, or against professional drivers like Dan.”

Below you can see a video that Ignite sent over to explain who Dan Whedon is. It shows some Indy 500 action, and also features a stealth bomber. For some reason. And also a screenshot of a track. There are also beta sign-ups over on the Simraceway site.

I used to race there quite a bit, when they used rFactor it was by far the easiest way to get the game modded and join a competitive server. Good times. As far as I’m aware this new SRW client is rFactor with new pants on though, so if you’re into your sims (Shift doesn’t count) and don’t have rFactor it’s worth a look. If you’re not willing to splash out on iRacing that is.

I mean.. if a driver divebombs another when he is clearly way too far back and puts the other driver out of the race, what happens from there? Does he just get his x4 and life goes on, or does he get a drive-through/stop-go or something along those lines?

Well, I think the actual steward of iRacing does ok with what’s a difficult job. People file tons of protests in races at all levels and he has to go through the replays and talk to the people involved and try to discern intent/recklessness before warning/suspending/etc. AFAIK, while he regularly spectates races and competes himself he doesn’t actually dole out black flags or kick people from servers during the events. Instead, drivers can file protests over driving incidents or abusing behavior in chat and he deals with those.

On the other hand, there is a lot of dissatisfaction among the DWC drivers with the way the gentleman who handles competition issues in those series does his job. While he has the ability to issue black flags for breaches of the rules or to clear black flags that are automatically given by the sim and on occasion have been the result of a glitch in the sim’s race control system, his tendency to do so has been wildly inconsistent. He also has some sort of system he uses (which, frankly, I don’t understand) beyond SR to assign blame for incidents on specific drivers, and again, his handling of it has been very inconsistent and has caused most of the competitors to question his competence.

There was a specific situation that was actually the final straw for me and contributed to my not renewing my subscription last summer. During one of the Road DWC races at Indianapolis several competitors noted that there was a bug in the simulation that allowed you to use the pit access road to bypass the final corner of the circuit, and since it was slightly faster there were people who used it in practice/qualifying since there was no penalty for doing so given by the sim. Despite the queries, the drivers were never told they couldn’t use it, so two of the top guys ended up doing it during the live broadcast of the actual race. One of them ended up being given a multiple race suspension from the series, which was such a display of incompetence on their part I’ve refused to support them since then (not just for that single incident, but more because I refuse to pay for a premium service that double-dips with a subscription and microtransactions while everyone in the company outside of the 2 men who founded it are completely incompetent).

The chief steward oversees the entire service, and responds to protests filed by drivers for abusive driving/chat and hands out warnings/suspensions/account terminations as necessary. It works well in practice, and I always liked that he was more lenient than most people would like him to be. People shouldn’t be afraid to race and make mistakes, imho, so his job should primarily be to police abusive chat and people who are intentionally causing problems on the track.

The guy who handles live penalties for the DWC races is a toolbox who is utterly incompetent, but I think if someone who knew what they were doing handled his job it would be beneficial. He can clear black flags that were mistakenly given by the sim (doesn’t happen often, but it can) and issue his own if someone does something wrong, as well as removing people from the race server. He’s also present on the server to give rule clarfications and things like that, and he has some system he uses to assign blame for DWC incidents on specific drivers and has suspended at least one person for his involvement in accidents. All of this, would be great if the guy weren’t completely clueless, but like almost everyone else at iRacing (beyond the 2 guys who founded it) he’s incompetent to the point where he’s punished drivers for doing things that they specifically asked about prior to a race and were never given clarification on what was allowed/disallowed.

That overall level of incompetence and the bizarre subscription/micro-transaction model they use is why I haven’t renewed my subscription in over a year even though I find it’s the best racing sim out there and the only one that is even remotely worthwhile if you’re interested in online competition.